Information for Authors
- Submission
- Copy Presentation
- Spelling and Punctuation
- Hyphens and Dashes
- Abbreviations and Initials
- Quotations
- Italics, Underlining and Bold
- Figures, Dates, Years etc.
- References to Journal Articles
- References to Chapters in Collections of Essays
- References to Other Texts
- Referencing Books Reviewed
- Names
- Style
1. Submission
To assist publication manuscripts should be submitted electronically. Contributors should keep their own backup copy of all files. Most computer and word processor files are acceptable but the preferred is Microsoft Word.
2. Copy Presentation
All copy should be legibly typed on A4 paper and all sections of the manuscript must be double-spaced using one side of the paper only. Margins of 25 mm (1 inch) should be left at the sides, top and bottom of each page. Number each page at the top along with all contact information (including email addresses) and on separate sheets: your entry for the Table of Contents (name and affiliation), and an alphabetical list of all periodicals reviewed, with volume number(s) for the year under review.
- Each chapter should carry a separate opening page giving chapter number, chapter title, and author(s)'s name(s), together with an introductory paragraph listing the sections.
- Section headings at the beginning of each chapter should be in roman type in all cases and not in italics.
- Section headings within the chapter should be numbered in Arabic and ranged left. Subheadings should be prefixed with lower case letter and brackets.
- Please use the tab key when indenting for a paragraph.
- In a series, commas should be included to and including terms up the penultimate (Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley).
- Square brackets are used to denote Contributor Z's review in Contributor A's section e.g. [X.Y.Z.].
- Referring to a particular volume or chapter or part, the word (i.e. volume, chapter, part, etc.) should be without inverted commas, and the initial letter should be lower-case when denoting the particular (e.g. chapter 5), and when denoting the general ('In the opening chapter . . .').
- Any symbols or phonetics appearing within the text should be clearly indicated on a separate sheet to accompany the manuscript.
3. Spelling and Punctuation
For those words which have alternatives s/z spellings consult the Concise Oxford Dictionary (10th edn). Please note that this means z as a rule although analyse, paralyse, advertise, advise, apprise, chastise, comprise, demise, despise, devise, enterprise, excise, exercise, franchise, improvise, incise, premise, revise, supervise, surmise, surprise do not take z.
Words having alternative x/ct spellings should be spelt with ct (connection).
4. Hyphens and Dashes
Compound adjectives should be hyphenated, e.g. eighteenth-century prose but prose of the eighteenth century; a well-written book but the book is well written. Compound adjectives take no hyphen when the first word ends in -ly e.g. badly written. Note that early seventeenth-century poetry takes one and not two hyphens.
Where a word is hyphenated simply because it breaks at the end of a line, it will be assumed that the hyphen is not required in print. If the hyphen is required, regardless of the position of the word on the printed page, this should be indicated by the words stet hyphen being written in pencil in the margin alongside.
Prefixes such as re- and de- should be hyphenated if followed by a repeated vowel (re-educate)
5. Abbreviations and Initials
Style and titles do not take full point (Dr, Jr, St, Mme, Ms etc.).
Etymological abbreviations do not take full points (EME, OF, OW). Abbreviations of time carry no full point (AD, BC, [small capital], am, pm [lower case]) but abbreviations of organizations do not carry full points, unless the PMLA standard listing indicates otherwise (USA, UK, NZ, BBC, ITV, UNESCO, RSC).
Common abbreviations from the Latin do take full points (e.g., i.e., etc., ibid., et al. but note
6. Quotations
Quotation marks, whether used to indicate speech or the specialized use of a word, should always be single quotes in the first instance.
Where a quotation forms part of a longer sentence the closing quote precedes all punctuation except an exclamation mark, question mark, dash or parenthesis belonging only to the quotation: i.e. His conclusion is that Hardy is 'a disturbingly puzzled, sceptical, various modern poet'.
Where the quotation contains a grammatically complete sentence starting with a capital letter the full point precedes the closing quote: i.e. Richard Holmes comments on this statement of Coleridge's that 'It was an expressive exaggeration.'
Quotations within quotations take double quotes within single quotes.
All spellings, punctuation, abbreviations, etc. within a quotation should be rendered exactly as in the original, even if thi
7. Italics, Underlining and Bold
Please use the pc format keys for italic, bold and underlining. If underlining is to appear in the final printed version, the word concerned should be underlined with a straight line, and the word underscore written in the margin alongside.
Italics should be used for book titles, titles of journals, plays, etc. and should also be indicated for foreign phrases inserted in the text:
Italic: circa/c., et al., fin de siècle, inter alia, mise en scène, sic
Roman: apropos, au fait, bricolage, cf. (NB= 'compare', not 'see'), de facto, dramatis personae, elite, exemplum/exempla, Festschrift, ibid., leitmotif/leitmotiv, mimesis, oeuvre, per se, q.v., recherché, regime, résum´, role, status quo, stemma/stemmata, topos/topoi, tour de f
8. Figures, Dates, Years etc.
In the main text (except for pagination of articles), spell out numbers one to ninety-nine, except where they are attached to percentages, units or sums of money (10 km, 3 m, 25 per cent [not %]). Use a hyphen in composite numbers (twenty-seven), unless they form part of a date, or volume number. Numbers over 100 should be shown in figures (101, 2,485) inserting a comma between the thousands and the hundreds.
Ordinals should be treated in like manner (seventh, twenty-third, 187th, 2,123rd).
Dates should be written in the sequence day month year with no ordinal suffix and no punctuation (13 June 1842).
Where a succession is referred to, repeat only those units which have changed (1982-91).
9. References to Journal Articles
In view of the online search criteria, references should appear as e.g.:
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (93[1999]) includes Keith Arbour, 'Book Canvassers, Mark Twain, and Hamlet's Ghost' (PBSA 93[1999] 5-37);
The year of publication must be included and the style/spacing followed (journal acronym (in italics) volume:issue[year of publication] page span).
References to YWCCT should contain the publication year (YWCCT 9[2001] 239).
Where the pagination for a journal begins with page 1 for each issue, for example ELN, ChauR, DUJ, VN, the issue number must be included (in roman numerals) with the pagination e.g. (ELN 46:ii[1992] 4-5). Information given in the form, for example 'In UTQ (62.226-49) . . . ' will not be captured for
10. References to Chapters in Collections of Essays
Where a collection of essays is reviewed as a whole, there is no need to supply page references. The book should be reviewed as in section 12 below (Referencing Books Reviewed).
Where an article from a collection of essays or conference proceedings is reviewed separately from the other articles or papers in the volume, the first instance citation should be explicit and indicate the author and title of the article and the reference should indicate the name(s) of the editor(s) plus the title of the collection and the page references:
Eric Reuland and Wim Kosmeijer deal with related topics in 'Projecting Inflected Verbs' (in Fanslow, ed. The Parameterization of Universal Grammar, pp. 56-72).
Later references in the same section need only indicate the editor and the page numbers: (in G. Fanslow, pp. 56-72).
11. References to Other Texts
Abbreviations used in referring to texts should be as follows:
folio - fo.; folios - fos.
page(s) - p. or pp.
line(s) - l. or ll. (with a margin note to the printer explaining that this means lines and not the number 11, if confusion seems likely).
page and note references: pp. 00-0, 00ff.
act, scene, line references: IV.iii.22-3.
Use (note spacing):
ff. instead of et seq.
n. 30
nn. 30-1
p. 33n
vol. Vols
no. nos
In-text references as follows: see figure 3.2, chapter 1, table 6 (lower case initial, spelt out).
Biblical references should be written with initial number (if any) in Arabic style, book name in full, chapter number (Arabic), full point, (no space), and Arabic numbers for verse(s) (2 Corinthians 3.17.18; 1 Peter 2.5-7).
Two distinct page reference
12. Referencing Books Reviewed
Standard abbreviations are ed. (edited, editor); trans. (translated, translator); intro. (introduced, introduction); illus. (illustrated, illustrator); comp. (compiled, compiler), distr. (distributed). Note that contractions (edn) do not take full points.
References will appear in the printed volume at the end of each chapter in a single alphabetical list by author. There should be no numbering of references within the text. Therefore, the title and author should be included in the text. Within the chapter reference should be made to the title and author/editor. The List of Books Reviewed should refer only to books reviewed in the text.
The List of Books Reviewed should be arranged alphabetically by author. Each entry should be ordered and contain
13. Names
When dealing with unusual personal or place names, foreign names, or names which are unusual variants of commoner names, please confirm the name by writing it by hand in block capitals in the left-hand margin. This saves time being wasted at the editorial stage in checking whether such a name may have accidentally been mistyped. (Recent examples have included the forename Raachel, and the surnames Charke and Ferster.) O M Brack Jr, for instance, does not use full points after his initials.
When referring to all but the most commonly known authors or critics for the first time in your chapter or section, provide first name or initials: e.g. 'Milton' but 'Roland Barthes'; Wordsworth' but 'Jerome J. McGann'; 'Shakespeare' but 'Stephen Goldblatt' This is useful for readers and indexers.
14. Style
Aim for clear, standard English. Avoid beginning sentences with connectives ('and', 'but', etc.), the frequent use of colloquial abbreviations ('can't', 'don't', 'quotes' as a noun etc.), and avoid the excessive use of semi-colons, where commas or full stops would serve. Ensure that sentences are grammatically complete.
Author Self Archiving/Public Access Policy
For information about this journal's policy, please visit our Author Self-Archiving policy page.